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Written  May 16, 2024.  Posted today as an experiment.   -Carl Today, I am sitting on a threshold.  It is a threshold I would have liked to have avoided all of my life, or at least until very near the end of it.  I have been on disability since September, and there is a kind of eligibility threshold at the one year mark.  My understanding (which is poor, a factor in this process) is that it is pretty challenging to qualify for long term disability, but once one does qualify, it is not such a circus to maintain the status. Of course, I don’t want to qualify as disabled, except, of course, that I am.  Physically I’m limited in strength, dexterity, eyesight, and endurance.  The more significant (to me) limitation is…cognitive.   I used to be a pretty smart guy.  I don’t remember my exact IQ, but it was above average.  I was put into the Mentally Gifted Minors program when I was in the third grade.  My friend, David Reinhart, was put into it.  I was never tested for it, but I was confid

Hospice and the Type One Error

In Permaculture design, a Type One Error is an error which is so essentially wrong that no amount of time, energy, effort, or creative genius can completely overcome it. The only way to really beat a Type One Error is to start over. There is a Type One Error in how we do Medicare hospice care in the United States of America. The error is that hospice is a specialized healthcare ghetto outside of medicine’s bustling shiny downtown. In broad strokes, what happened was that when hospice came to the States, it was such a good idea--such a basic, natural, obvious, low-tech response to terminal illness--that the established healthcare system couldn’t grok it. In second-wave feminist terms, it was a feminine response—creating a safe, supportive space for a natural process; life completion and dying. The dominant paradigm in western medicine is still masculine —to do, to cut, medicate, analyze, atomize, and generally “science the shit out of this.” (Yes, “science” IS a verb.) So, ho